At Jackson hearing, Alabama's AG refuses to say Biden is 'duly elected' president

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall testified Thursday as a Republican witness in opposition to the confirmation of President Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, but instead made headlines over his refusal to acknowledge Biden as the "duly elected and lawfully serving president of the United States."

Marshall was questioned by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who focused his initial line of questioning on Marshall's views about Biden.

"Is Joseph R. Biden of Delaware the duly elected and lawfully elected serving president of the United States of America?" Whitehouse asked.

"He is the president of this country," Marshall responded.

"Is he the duly elected and lawfully serving president of the United States?" Whitehouse asked again.

"He is the president of this country," Marshall repeated.

"Are you answering that omitting the language 'duly elected and lawfully serving' purposefully?" Whitehouse continued.

"I'm answering the question," Marshall said. "He is the president of the United States."

"And you have no view as to whether he was duly elected or is lawfully serving?" Whitehouse again asked.

"I'm telling you he is the president of the United States," Marshall replied.

Marshall has come under fire for his alleged role in organizing the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., which preceded the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol seeking to block the certification of Biden's victory in the 2020 election over then-President Donald Trump.

Marshall is the head of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a group that paid for robocalls telling Trump supporters where to meet on Jan. 6, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.

Marshall has denied knowledge of the robocalls, but he is certainly not alone in his apparent view that Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 presidential election. An Axios/Momentive poll released in January found that only 55% of Americans view Biden as having legitimately won, while 26% of those surveyed said they did not accept him as the legally elected president, and 16% said they were unsure.

Months before the 2020 election, Trump embarked on a campaign to persuade Americans that the election would be subject to fraud, attributing this, without any basis in fact, to an increase in mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic. Exhaustive investigations, court cases and recounts of ballots all established conclusively that fraud had not played a role in deciding the winner. Trump, meanwhile, continues to press on with his claims that Biden did not win the election, and has moved to ostracize former supporters who refuse to back that view.